Research & Use Keywords. Optimize your blog for search engines. Use a keyword research tool to create a keyword glossary of words related to your brand, business, topic or industry that are in demand. Content creators should use the glossary as a reference for planning, writing and publishing content online.

Create a Content Plan. Create a structured, yet flexible content plan for your business blog. Assign topics and keywords to any planned articles, blog posts, curated news and other content. Its okay to expect some “wildcard” posts in case breaking industry news occurs, as long as content creators expect to consult the keyword list when posting.

Use Keywords Everywhere. Have you noticed a theme? Keywords are a blog’s most important feature for attracting organic traffic, but repetitive use in body text can turn readers off. To increase keyword density without sacrificing content quality, use keywords everywhere: In post titles, anchor text for URLs, tags, post categories, image alt text, audio and video title names, metadata, etc.

Create Valuable Content. Varied, compelling content draws readers back frequently to check for updates. Include wide-ranging content and formats in your blog posts, as they relate to your business, brand or industry. Some examples of types of posts that are popular include lists, FAQs, how-tos, interviews, industry news, current events, photo spreads and infographics.

The Three Cs. Get some of your content from the outside your organization through Curation, Comments and Crowdsourcing. Share posts from important blogs in your industry. Write posts that address poignant comments. Create surveys, polls and contests that result in content from your target market. Give audiences motivation to participate. Don’t forget to link – outbound links attract inbound links!

Quality Over Quantity. Some people post once a month, others by the week and even a few swear by blogging every day. But the quantity of posts that you publish isn’t as important as the quality. Quality over quantity will keep the readers of your business blog engaged and coming back for more.

Balance. Find a balance of optimizing blog text keywords and context for readers and search engines: Don’t forget that your target reader isn’t a computer. Offset curated content with original content. Find the right timing, for you and your brand, to publish new posts and remain consistent.

Incorporate Gadgets. You can share your work, but truly successful blog posts are distributed far and wide by zealous readers. Encourage this with gadgets embedded in each post or on each page, like RSS syndication feeds, widgets for social bookmark sites and buttons to instantly share posts via Twitter, Facebook or other social media sites. This gives more visibility and can help to build more links.

Getting the most value from a business blog takes a little knowledge and a lot of strategy, but it doesn’t have to be time consuming. Follow the tips above and you’ll be well on your way to reaping the benefits blogs can provide to companies.

1. Google Webmaster Central

2. Matt Cutts Blog

3. SEOmoz Blog

4. Search Engine Land

5. Online Marketing Blog

6. Search Engine Watch

7. Search Engine Journal

8. Search Engine Roundtable (normal feed)

9. Marketing Pilgrim

10. HubSpot

11. Graywolf’s SEO Blog

12. Search Engine Guide

13. Yoast

14. Hobo UK SEO Blog

15. Get Elastic

16. BlogStorm

17. SEOptimise

18. Daily SEO Blog

19. Small Business SEM

20. Outspoken Media Blog

21. Clix Marketing

22. Traffick

23. Reel SEO

24. SEO Scoop

25. ClickEquations

26. SEO Smarty

Who did we miss?

TopRank Marketing CEO, Lee Odden will join a panel of industry experts, including Sally Falkow, President of PRESSFeed, and Stephan Spencer, Founder & President of Netconcepts, on Wednesday, December 10th to discuss SEO through blogs and feeds.

In this session, Lee will present best practices for blog content optimization, including how to optimize and promote blog content to attract readers and links to increase traffic and search engine visibility. Sally will cover feeds and digital asset syndication, and Stephan will cover blog software optimization.

Session Details
10:30 am, Wednesday December 10th

SEO Through Blogs & Feeds
Not yet running a blog? Not syndicating your content through web feeds? Then you’re missing out on an important area that can help your overall SEO efforts. Learn more about the unique advantages blogs and feeds offer to search engine optimization.

Moderator:
Rebecca Lieb, Contributing Editor, ClickZ
Speakers:
Lee Odden, CEO, TopRank Online Marketing
Sally Falkow, President, PRESSfeed
Stephan Spencer, Founder & President, Netconcepts, LLC

Turning PR Efforts into SEO Results

Senior Account Manager, Jolina Pettice will present at a session on Tuesday, December 9th giving best practices for turning PR efforts into SEO results.

Session Details:
2:45, Tuesday December 9th

Search engine optimization is one of the most effective ways to reach target audiences. Unfortunately, most organizations are focused solely on how SEO impacts marketing and advertising and are failing to take advantage of the unique and very impactful results that are generated when SEO is applied to public relations. Organizations that capitalize on the convergence of marketing, advertising and public relations stand to benefit from more successful, less-costly campaigns, while organizations that fail to integrate PR into SEO efforts stand to miss out on a valuable opportunity.

Optimizing press releases for natural search offers organizations the opportunity to drive traffic from authoritative third party sites. It also provides another means to generate fresh content for the organization’s web site and the ability to determine whether or not an organization’s message is connecting with intended audiences. In addition, natural search optimization can generate new leads and show measurable results. These tools are often less costly than traditional advertising programs and leverage existing advertising content to communicate more directly with consumers.

This session will provide real-life examples to show how organizations can achieve maximum results for any communications campaign through natural search optimization of press releases.

Moderator:
Andy Atkins-Krüger, Managing Director, WebCertain Europe Ltd
Speakers:
Greg Jarboe, President & Co-founder, SEO-PR
Sarah Skerik, Vice President, Distribution Services, PR Newswire
Jiyan Wei, Product Manager, PR Web, Vocus
Jolina Pettice, Senior Account Manager, TopRank Marketing

TopRank Online Marketing provides internet marketing services for Fortune 500 companies with specialties in blog marketing, social media, SEO and digital public relations.

However, in order to increase the effectiveness of your corporate blog, you need to keep these blogging best practices in mind:

Content – Your blog posts must be interesting and useful to your readers. Develop your unique voice and don’t be afraid to post things others will not agree to.

Frequency – There is a direct correlation to blog popularity and the number of times it’s updated. Post 3-5 times per week at a minimum. Blogs that are updated many times a day can get included in the Google News index which is updated daily. That means getting your content into Google search results the same day it’s posted to your blog.

Distribution – A common issue from people new to blogs and RSS feeds is where to find them. Marketing a blog brings additional advantages over a traditional web site. A blog and associated RSS/Atom feed can be promoted within the blogoshpere as well as through traditional directories, search engines and web site linking. The opportunity for blog exposure is much greater than a regular web site alone. Make it easy for news feed subscribers to find your blog through both web site search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN) and RSS search engines (Bloglines, Feedster, Technorati).

Once you have these three biggies mastered, your blog will probably do pretty well for your business. But there are a few other blog optimization tips that can really help with the authority of you blog and your company:

Blog with keywords in mind – Your blog post titles should use keywords that are relevant to the post. Also, update your blog software template so that keywords from the post titles are in text links to archive posts, in the title tag and meta description tag.

Post on current news - Pay attention to your industry and keep up to date with trends and events so you can post about them and provide commentary.

Post your own thoughts – Show your industry expertise by creating original content in the form of short articles. You can create a teaser article with a link to the full document on your web site.

Link out – It’s important you link to thematically similar web sites/blogs. Other blogs that notice your link may often link back.

Link in – Submit your blog to all the search engines and directories that you would submit a web site to. Also submit to blog/RSS specific directories and search engines.

Trackbacks – Use a comment system that allows trackbacks to any news or blog sites you’re commenting on. This creates a link from other highly trafficked sites to your blog.

Blog elsewhere – Find or ask to be a “guest blogger” on related blogs. You can also ask other bloggers in your industry to be a guest blogger on your site.

With these tips in mind, there should be no reason why your blog wouldn’t rank highly in the search engines or not drive qualified traffic and leads to your corporate website. Setting up a blog is easy, with sites like Blogger and WordPress offering free blog software and hosting.

TopRank Online Marketing also offers blog optimization and blog marketing services for your company. For more information, contact us today!